I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for transmitting control information in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems.
In a wireless communication system, a base station may transmit data to one or more user equipments (UEs) on the downlink and/or receive data from the UEs on the uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the UEs, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UEs to the base station. The base station may also transmit control information (e.g., assignments of system resources) to the UEs. Similarly, the UEs may transmit control information to the base station to support data transmission on the downlink and/or for other purposes. It is desirable to transmit data and control information as efficiently as possible in order to improve system performance.